Lost in a moment
by lolly2222
Summary: Red john watches Lisbon as she sits at a bar.


**Authors note: So I've been sick and I tend to be in a bad mood when I'm ill. That is all the explanation I have for my random ideas. **

**Disclaimer: You can't buy love or the mentalist unfortunately. Not that I could afford to anyway.**

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The 'Cat Dragged Inn' was exactly ten minutes from her apartment. She had made the short walk here after remaining only three short minutes alone in her apartment. The team had finally finished a gruelling case.

The local bar she rarely frequented was reminiscent of the ones her grandfather had been a regular at, back home in Kerry. It was no doubt a futile effort to connect with the man she had known so briefly in her formative years. A salt of the earth type, grounded in reality, quick with the lash of his tongue but always truthful and honest.

It was the mixture of stale whisky and musky velvet here, which was most appealing. No overpowering sickly sweet 'freshener' that choked the lungs. It was irritating this need society had to take something beautiful and natural and bastradise it into an unnecessary commodity. Why not just have real flowers?

In the autumn evenings fading light, the suns final rays were casting shadows across the wooden floors and booths. There were only three present, Wednesdays were always quiet. Teresa Lisbon was born on Wednesday all those years ago was Wednesday's child is full of woe.

The bar stool she sat on creaked as she shifted her slight weight. She was down a good five pounds. The job was stressful and her consultant far more so. She raked a pale hand through her raven locks. The contrast was stark, even more so amongst the warm wooden setting. She never fit the sun burnt landscape of California, no she was meant for rolling green hills half a world away.

Lost in the moment, she twirled the sun highlighted amber. Swirling and whirling, round and round, the slight twitch of her wrist giving it the necessary momentum. It was like her life, a constantly repeating cycle with no beginning and no end.

She was done in. They had argued.

Looking out through the motif covered window, a steady stream of strangers clasped their coats to their bodies in a futile attempt to keep warm. They were not interesting, they were mere worker drones, carbon copies, each a weaker version of the original, they were so degraded they were worthless.

The world moved on outside but in here, it was as if the room itself was holding its breath awaiting something... anything. Dust particles frolicked in the beams of light merging and separating, free from any outside influences. The planet functioned on attraction and repulsion, everything searches to connect but quite often the strength of the pull pushes away. Like people and their search for meaning, it was all wasted effort without context. He gave them perspective.

It was almost time, she would leave soon she had already had three, thus her stress was lessoned but her control still firmly intact.

She had not noticed him, she never did, he was so average to the eye, an unassuming package that held a deadly secret. He moved to the bar, he had been near her several times before today but never one on one like this when she was conscious of his presence. It was titillating.

Well, the sporadic appearances of the bartender sometimes encroached on their intimacy but he kept leaving, moving to the back room repeatedly, constantly tidying up.

The bartender must be feeling safe with only the presence of a decorated agent and a lone male to leave for so long. It amused him; just how completely unaware the jaded young man was already, the taking of everything at face value was foolish of him.

He was far from protected, the sole male both he and she had so quickly dismissed, happened to be the notorious serial killer better known as Red John. Sometimes he had to fight the urge to yell it at people to see their fear, violate their notions of safety. However he did not get to where he was by being impulsive. No he was careful and patient, slowly drawing in his prey like a spider.

If he wanted to kill him he would be dead by now but the male of the species, bar Patrick Jane, had never intrigued him. It was and always and forever would be the female of the species that attracted his attentions and Teresa Lisbon had him enraptured.

She was an enigma, so small yet so strong, she should have been broken by her childhood but she thrived. He was so sure that she would surprise him in her final moments he could hardly contain himself.

He can smell her cinnamon and vanilla aroma from here. It is very magnetic but when fear and sweat become intermingled with a woman's natural scent, it is practically orgasmic. He always leaves him with a feeling of discontent, that he can not take it with him.

How he longs to bottle each personal fragrance of death, odour has such a unique link to memory; the association so powerful that the slightest whiff and your back to that moment. Their smell is almost his favourite part of his experience. Almost.

He glances casually over at her, she throws a small smile his way, how wonderfully polite you are Agent Lisbon he smirks. It has nothing on her special smile, the one she gives Patrick, he loves that one, it is so very resplendent. He is careful not to look for too long, he may arouse suspicion otherwise.

Looking at her, he wants her but for now he can only take in her silent beauty. He will taste her eventually; they do not know he does that, intimately caresses their skin, trailing his tongue along their bodies. It's all part of his process. They are his brides after all, and a marriage must be consummated, he is just exceptional at covering his tracks.

He wipes their skin before he makes his first cut, a clean canvas. As canvases go, she is one of the more a beautiful ones. He loves how pale she is, her skin is as translucent as Patrick makes out her thoughts are.

He can see those thin blue lines just under her dermis crisscrossing, each one begging to be opened, to bleed. Her life force is so close to the surface so clearly visible, not marred by the tan most women insist on having these days. The women of the world fry themselves, baking their exquisite outer organ until they resemble wrinkled leather or get cancer.

How do they then say that he is the monster? He respects the female form, he loves it, what he does is almost like a service he is providing, forever freezing a woman in her prime and transforming the lives of those around her after her death, making their lives better.

When he takes dearest Teresa, those around her will benefit, her brothers will stop their bickering, her two colleagues will unite in their grief and Patrick... dear sweet, naive Patrick will rise from the flames like a phoenix and he will burn this world with his wrath. His progeny will be breathtaking.

He was practically salivating at the thought of the moment he would drag his blade across her. The blue blood oxygenated; forming a thin red line severe against her white skin, the first of many.

He knew how he would do it. He had been watching her for years. He had crept into her room many times over the decade she had been in charge of his case. She slept so deeply after a long case and some tequila. She rarely drank to excess but when she did, he was informed and he visited.

Their coupling wouldn't be tonight but soon. He would wait, giving his foe the first taste, he was a gracious man after all and it would wound all the more when he snuffed out her life. Patrick and she were so close, so exceedingly near to crossing that line and when Patrick marked her with his body, he would simultaneously be marking her for death. A poetic, tragic and symbolic act, joining together will rip them apart.

She stood up calling a goodbye to the young man in the back. He watched her leave, as she exited the warmth of the room, she did not pull her coat close, no she faced the harsh wind head on, never any weakness shown.

He watched her shrinking figure moving in the distance. Teresa Lisbon had lost so much in her life but not her control, not as long as she had a say. It was a shame in some ways that he was going to remove the one thing she had left, that actually mattered to her, right before he took her life. But pride has always come before fall.


End file.
